Job Description

About Us

Coral Gardeners is a mission-driven organisation founded in 2017 by young surfers and freedivers from Mo’orea. Witnessing the degradation of their home reef, they united to make a difference. Today, we are an international collective committed to revolutionising ocean conservation and saving coral reefs.

CG Labs is our technology arm. It builds the tools that help us monitor reefs, measure the impact of restoration and share what we learn with the world, including ReefOS, our underwater camera system.

Position Overview

As AI/ML Software Engineer, you will turn raw reef data into reliable insight. You will own the embedded software of the ReefOS camera, build the pipelines that process coral reef imagery and bioacoustic recordings, and develop the computer vision and bioacoustics models that power CG Labs monitoring tools.

You will work closely with our Science, Hardware, Engineering and field teams to make sure that what is captured underwater becomes accurate, accessible results in our web applications, and that progress and impact are clearly shared across the organisation.

Key Responsibilities

Embedded software

• Lead and own end to end the development of the embedded code running on the ReefOS camera.
• Ensure reliable, efficient operation under field constraints: power consumption, storage, data capture and on-device processing.
• Implement testing, monitoring and update procedures for devices deployed in the field, and work with the Hardware and field teams to diagnose issues and strengthen the system.

Data pipelines

• Design, build and maintain scalable pipelines for large volumes of reef imagery and bioacoustic data.
• Automate data ingestion, processing and delivery, from capture to models and applications.
• Guarantee data quality, traceability and efficient storage.

AI models: computer vision and bioacoustics

• Develop, optimise and deploy state-of-the-art computer vision and bioacoustics models.
• Manage and curate annotated datasets to continuously improve model performance.
• Define evaluation metrics, track performance over time and iterate.
• Stay up to date with research and tools relevant to reef and ocean monitoring.

Integration with web applications

• Integrate AI outputs into CG Labs web applications so users can access insights and visualisations easily.
• Define with the development team the interfaces and data formats used to deliver model results.

Communication and documentation

• Share progress and results with the wider team through clear data visualisation and impactful storytelling.
• Document models, pipelines and methods so others can understand, reuse and improve them.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Experience:
• Strong experience in machine learning and computer vision; experience in bioacoustics or audio signal processing is a strong plus.
• Experience with embedded software and edge devices, ideally in constrained or harsh environments.
• Experience integrating models into web applications or APIs.
• Skills:
• Solid programming skills in Python and modern ML frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, TensorFlow), from training to deployment.
• Ability to design and maintain scalable data pipelines and work with large datasets.
• Good practices in dataset annotation, curation and model evaluation.
• Ability to communicate technical results clearly through data visualisation and storytelling.
• Rigorous and autonomous, comfortable working across scientific, hardware, engineering and field teams.
• Genuine interest in ocean conservation and coral reef restoration.

Why Coral Gardeners?

This is a rare opportunity to put your technical skills to work on a direct, measurable impact for marine conservation. Your models and code will run on real reefs, and the insights they produce will shape how we restore them. Join a passionate, innovative team and help us drive the future of coral restoration. Together, we can make a lasting difference for the world’s oceans.

Want to learn more about us and our mission?

Check out our website to discover how we’re revolutionising coral reef restoration and driving global ocean conservation.